1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an automatic disc player system, and more particularly, to an automatic disc player system in which a plurality of discs are stored therein and one of the discs is in turn selected and loaded automatically, thus enabling a successive play of discs in accordance with a preselected order of play.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the automatic disc player systems of the type described above, the juke box is generally known and used popularly.
However, in the case of known type juke box, there are several disadvantages such that the size of the body of the system is considerably large, and that it is very troublesome to put the discs in the portion of the system for receiving the discs and take them out of that portion due to structural reasons.
Therefore, those juke boxes are not suited for family use and are only available for business use.
On the other hand, with the advancement of digital circuit technology, several types of systems are proposed in which the density of information contained on the disc is greatly raised, by utilizing the digital recording process, as compared with the conventional LP record in which the signals are recorded in the analog form.
In particular, there is a type utilizing a disc of relatively small size, generally called "compact disc" or "C-DAD", to which a laser beam is applied from a pickup means for reproducing signals prerecorded thereon.
The compact disc has a diameter of 12 cm (about 4.7 inches), which is easy to handle, and therefore has an advantage in that the size of the player system can be reduced.
Since the compact disc can record, on a single side thereof, information as much as one and a half times that recorded on both sides of the conventional LP records, only about 50 compact discs are required for recording 1000 pieces of music with each having 3 minutes of playing time. In such a case, the total thickness of the stacked compact discs is only 6 cm, since the thickness of each compact disc is about 1.2 mm.
It will be seen from the foregoing, if this small compact disc is adapted for a juke box, the size of the system can be reduced and such system can be available for family use.
An object of the present invention is therefore to provide a disc player system having relatively small size and in which the handling of discs (putting them in the housing of the system and taking them out of it) is facilitated.
It is another object of the invention to provide a disc player system in which the number of discs held within the housing of the system is increased by employing the compact disc.